Behind every successful enterprise is data-driven finance

The HFS & EXL joint data-led study takes the pulse of more than 200 finance and accounting leaders globally across several different industries to identify their biggest priorities, most significant challenges and organizational goals for the year ahead.

Key findings

• Data-Driven Finance is the Future: The vast majority of finance and accounting executives (89%) believe that data-driven finance is the future and 87% agree that they will need to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) analytics, cloud, and digitally fluent talent to reach their data-driven finance goals.


• Most Finance Teams Lag on Data Maturity: Just 23% of organizations currently have mature, data-driven finance functions in place today, while 77% report that they are still working on their finance data and analytics game plan. On average, finance and accounting leaders anticipate a two-year timeline for achieving their data-driven finance goals.


• Empowering Evolution of Finance from Cost Center to Strategic Advisor: The primary drivers behind finance and accounting teams’ push to data-driven finance are identifying growth opportunities to support the business and become a more strategic advisor (25%), driving operational cost reductions (18%) and improving capital allocation (18%).


• Fast-Growing Firms Show the Way: Among fast-growing firms with topline growth rates of more than 15%, 36% have mature, data-driven finance functions and 32% cite the primary driver of their data-driven strategies as the ability to become a strategic advisor to the business.